Abstract

Medical education in the Republic of South Africa has in the last thirty years taken on a quality unique in the world. It has quite rapidly become bilingual to the extent that over 40% of present undergraduates are learning medicine in Afrikaans and not in English, the other official language of the Republic. If one extrapolates from the present curve, in the near future over half of all those graduating will have been taught almost exclusively in Afrikaans.

The bilingual teaching of medicine within a country is not new. Canada has used both French and English for years; Belgium, both